CONCRETE ABSTRACTIONISTS

Education classes in grad school help pay the bills. That is, if you're a teacher, then you have to get an advanced degree or two plus certification to make any money at all. Then you have to work in the Summer as well. And if you're real lucky, then you won't be RIFed after having taught for 22 years as a friend of ours was this week. (Yet there are still those who bemoan tenure for teachers.)

But some classes use charts and diagrams, models and formulas, for how to teach more effectively. Most of these classes have profs who haven't been in a high school or elementary class for years. You see, they advanced in their education to make more money and wound up with a PhD and thus priced themselves out of the mandatory schooling range and proceed on to college (some use university here without the obligatory the preceding, but when I hear someone say they go to university, I think they're European or trying to be) to tell others what works in the classroom as motivational or inspirational, maybe experimental, when they simply don't know.

But when they show the Johari Window or have self-analysis assessments that deal with things such as random or concrete learning and behavioral styles, I guess a guy can find it interesting. One thing I took away was that people are different and for the most part, you're not going to change a habit or way of life.

Take the poor dinosaurs in the photo above taken perhaps 6,000 years ago. Some say longer. Billions of years ago according to carbon dating, but that's not the point. The point is these guys missed the boat--literally. One reason may have been forgetfulness. Or unawareness. Or tardiness. it could even be a combination of 2 of the 3 or all 3. I think I'll devise a chart to be Power Pointed in grad classes. I'll need a name; ok, here goes TQ's Quadrangle Minus Variable A. That sounds pretty educationese to me. We might even be able to milk a whole class out of it, proving that it would be just about as helpful in the long run as most education classes.

I'm going for it. I'll contact Iowa and California, then Texas. It seems those 3 states lead the nation in educational BS.